In medias res

There are two major topic which always causes huge dispute and flame on the mplayer-users mailing list. Number one is of course the topic of the

GCC 2.96 series

Also read this text !!!

The background : there were/are the GCC 2.95 series. The best of them was 2.95.3 . Please note the style of the version numbering. This is how the GCC team numbers their compilers. The 2.95 series are good. We never ever saw anything that was miscompiled because of the 2.95.3's faultiness.

The action : RedHat started to include a GCC version of 2.96 with their distributions. Note the version numbering. This should be the GCC team's versioning. They patched the CVS version of GCC (something between 2.95 and 3.0) They patched it very deep, and used this version in the distrib because 3.0 wasn't out at time, and they wanted IA64 support ASAP (business reasons). Oh, and GCC 2.95 miscompiles bash on the s390 architecture...

The facts : MPlayer's compile process needs the --disable-gcc-checking to proceed upon detecting a GCC version of 2.96 (apparently it needs this option on egcs too. It's because we don't test MPlayer on egcs. Pardon us, but we rather develop MPlayer). If you know MPlayer, you should know that it has great speed. It achieves this by having overoptimized MMX/SSE/3DNow/etc codes, fastmemcpy, and lots of other features. MPlayer contained MMX/3DNow instructions in a syntax that all Linux compilers accept it... except RedHat's GCC (it's more standard compliant). It simply skips them. It doesn't give errors. It doesn't give warnings. And, there is Lame. With gcc 2.96, its quality check (make test after compiling) doesn't even run !!! But hey, it compiles bash on s390 and IA64.

The statements : most developers around the world begun having bad feelings about RedHat's GCC 2.96 , and told their RedHat users to compile with other compiler than 2.96 . RedHat users' disappointment slowly went into anger. What was all good for, apart from giving headaches to developers, putting oil on anti-RedHat flame, confusing users? The answer, I do not know.

Present age, present time : RedHat says that GCC 2.96-85 and above is fixed, and works properly. Note the versioning. They should have started with something like this. What about GCC 2.96.85 ? It doesn't matter now. I don't search, but I still see bugs with 2.96 . It doesn't matter now, hopefully now RedHat will forget about 2.96 and turn towards 3.0. Towards a deep patched 3.0...

What I don't understand is why are we hated by RedHat users for putting warning messages, and stay-away documents in MPlayer . Why are we called "brain damaged", "total asshole", "childish" by RedHat users, on our mailing list, and even on the redhat-devel . They even considered forking MPlayer for themselves. RedHat users. Why? It's RedHat that made the compiler, why do you have to hate us? Are you that fellow RedHat worshippers? Please stop it. We don't hold a grudge against users, doesn't matter how loud you advertise its contrary. Please go flame Linus Torvalds, the DRI developers (oh, now I know why there were laid off by VA!), the Wine, avifile. Even if we are arrogant, are we not the same as the previously listed ones? Why do we have to suffer from your unrightful wrath?

Matt Willis kindly submitted a simple GCC-3.0.3 compiling howto, I'm copying it here:

Download gcc. Go to the http://gcc.gnu.org/mirrors.html page. I downloaded the following, but you don't need everything:
gcc-g++-3.0.3.tar.gz gcc-objc-3.0.3.tar.gz gcc-3.0.3.tar.gz gcc-g77-3.0.3.tar.gz gcc-testsuite-3.0.3.tar.gz gcc-core-3.0.3.tar.gz gcc-java-3.0.3.tar.gz

Unpack the files, make a build directory, and build

     tar xvzf gcc-*3.0.3.tar.gz
     mkdir gcc-build; cd gcc-build
     ../gcc-3.0.3/configure --prefix=/opt --program-suffix=-3.0.3
     make bootstrap; mkdir -p /opt; make install

Set your path to include /opt/bin
export PATH=/opt/bin:${PATH}
Now you can build MPlayer.

Binary distribution of MPlayer

Tons of users asked us about this. For example Debian users tend to say: Oh, I can apt-get install avifile, why should I compile MPlayer ? While this may sound reasonable, the problem lies a bit deeper than those-fuckin-MPlayer-developers-hate-gcc-2.96-and-RedHat-and-Debian.

Reasons: Law

MPlayer describes the sourcecode. It contains several files with incompatible licenses especially on the redistribution clauses. As source files, they are allowed to coexist in a same project.

Therefore, NEITHER BINARIES NOR BINARY PACKAGES OF MPlayer ARE ALLOWED TO EXIST SINCE SUCH OBJECTS BREAK LICENSES. PEOPLE WHO DISTRIBUTE SUCH BINARY PACKAGES ARE DOING ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES.

So if you know somebody who maintains a binary package then forward her/him this text and (ask him to) contact us. What (s)he is doing is illegal and IT IS NO LONGER MPlayer, but his/her mplayer. If it breaks, it is his/her fault. Don't come and cry on the MPlayer mailing lists, you will most likely be blacklisted.

Reasons: Technical

MPlayer's speed (MMX, SSE, fastmemcpy, etc) optimizations are determined during compilation. Thus a compiled binary contains very processor-specific code. An MPlayer binary compiled for K6 will die on Pentiums and vice versa. This has to be workarounded by runtime detection, which is not an easy thing to do becase it causes massive speed decrease. If you don't believe (it was explained in details 10000 times on mplayer-users, search the archive), solve it and send us a patch. Someone begun work on it, but disappeared since then.
MPlayer's video/audio system is not plugin based. It is compiled into the binary, thus making the binary depend on various libraries (the GUI depends on GTK, DivX4 depends on libdivxdecore, SDL depends on libSDL, every SDL release contains an unique bug that has to be workarounded during compiletime, X11 output compiles differently for X3 and X4, etc). You may say: yes, let's make 30 versions of downloadable binaries! We won't. We will make these stuff pluggable in the future.

We will (at least we wish) solve 2 of these problems in the next major release: the legal problems (we're on removing all non-GPL codes and getting others to change license to GPL) and the runtime CPU detection. Anyway, dependency on various libraries, versions and environment parameters will remain.

NVidia

We don't like nvidia's binary drives, their quality, unstability, non-existant user support, always appearing new bugs. And most users behave the same. We've been contacted by NVidia lately, and they said these bugs don't exist, unstability is caused by bad AGP chips, and they received no reports of driver bugs (the purple line, for example). So: if you have problem with your NVidia, update the nvidia driver and/or buy a new motherboard.

Joe Barr

He doesn't reply to our mails. His editor doesn't reply to our mails. The net is full with his false statements and accusitions (he apparently doesn't like for example the BSD guys, because of their different viewpoints [about what?]).

Now some quotes from different people about Joe Barr (just for you understand why doesn't he matter at all):

"You may all remember the LinuxWorld 2000, when he claimed that Linus T said that 'FreeBSD is just a handful of programmers'. Linus said NOTHING of the sort. When Joe was called on this, his reaction was to call BSD supporters assholes and jerks."

"He's interesting, but not good at avoiding, um... controversy. Joe Barr used to be one of the regulars on Will Zachmann's Canopus forum on Compuserve, years ago. He was an OS/2 advocate then (I was an OS/2 fan too). He used to go over-the-top, flaming people, and I suspect he had some hard times, then. He's mellowed some, judging by his columns recently. Moderately subtle humor was not his mode in those earlier days, not at all."